Good question, because it’s not going to fall on the floor. it’s not going to fly up into the air. it’s just going to float around until it runs into something. So let’s make a little mess, lets squirt some water as if it got away here. So those little drops are kind of departing, and then I’ve got a ball of water here, just floating around. Got to clean it up. What am I going to do? So you look for a dry rag, you grab a rag. And we could grab a Russian rag. Here is a nice Russian rag here and get it out. My ball of water is still just floating there fortunately, get a rag out, kind of let it float away, and then bring my ball of water back on the rag.

[Chris Hadfield] Source: LYBIO.net
My ball of water is on this rag, now. So it could have been chicken soup, it could have been some nasty fluid, but that’s how you stop it first, you get a rag out and you catch it. So now you have a wet rag. Now something like water is fine of course, and what we’ll do with this rag is, we’ll just hang it on a clip somewhere and let it evaporate. In that way, the water gets picked up by the humidifiers of the spaceship and goes back into our water system, gets purified back into drinking water. So we don’t lose the water. But if it was something else, something a little nasty, then of course, we could get a more rugged cleaner, just a great big cloth to wipe it up or if it was something a little sticky, we could get kind of baby wipes, wipes, we use pre-moistened wipes, then you can clean out the sticky stuff that’s maybe stuck to the wall and dried, or if you get jam on something.

So that takes care of things like water and stuff that isn’t toxic, but what do you do if something nasty like, you know, a battery leaks or some sort of nasty liquid is floating around? Well, then we have what’s called a contaminated cleanup kit, and I brought one here to show you. Here is our contaminated cleanup kit. And you of course, want to protect your eyes. So you put on goggles and you want to protect your mucous membranes and your lungs. So we put on a mask, try not to break it.

[Chris Hadfield] Source: LYBIO.net
Okay. So now, I have my mask and my goggles on, and then, we want to protect our hands; we have special gloves that protect us against chemicals. They are called silver shield gloves. So I put on my silver shield glove. And now, I am ready with various types of absorbing things. And in fact, we have some great big ones, special soak up mitts that we could put on top of a nasty spill, and then at the end of it, if you have the right type of combination, you could hold it in your hand and carefully pull off your glove and now you’ve got a nasty thing on the space station, but we would wrap it inside two or three layers of containment, bags that close zip up until we’re sure that it’s not going to leak out. And then finally, we’re safe and we can take off our gloves and our goggles and our mask and carry on with the business of being astronauts. Good question.

Chris Hadfield – Takes Care Of Space Station Spills. “How do you clean up a mess in space?” Good question, because it’s not going to fall on the floor. it’s not going to fly up into the air. Complete Full Transcript, Dialogue, Remarks, Saying, Quotes, Words And Text.